Page 2 of Strung Along

“It’s my birthday,” I blurt out, as if that means anything now.

He rubs his eyes, blinking repeatedly, as if he can’t believe this is actually happening. That I’m here. That I spoiled his plans.

“It’s my birthday, and this is what you’re doing.” I will my voice to remain steady, hard. The cold weight in my hands is areminder that I don’t have an open one to smack him across the face. “Three years wasted on you.”

“Anna, baby. I don’t know what happened—I just—fuck. Time got away from me, and I just forg?—”

I release a tight, painful exhale. Each breath feels like I’m swallowing fire. “Time got away from you?” With a shake of my head, I push forward. “How long?”

The strong cheekbones I loved to trace while we watched movies or drank wine on the terrace are suddenly too deeply etched. Plump lips I used to kiss at any given chance revolt me. His every feature turns and twists into something I hate the longer I stare at him.

“It was an accident.”

The woman he’s stillinsidegapes at his words. She’s beautiful, I realize. Even with her mouth twisted in disgust, she’s beautiful. All long limbs, perfectly placed muscles, and flawless skin. My stomach sinks further.

“Only now it was an accident? What about the first fifty times?” she asks him.

Betrayal morphs into rage. My body overheats with it. “How long has this been going on?” I ask through clenched teeth.

“Months!” the woman screeches. Finally, she shoves him away from her, and I glance at the sky when they separate. “For months, he’s been taking me here!”

“She’s lying,” Stewart blubbers.

With a careful sweep of my eyes, I take him in as he shoves his dick into his pants and frantically zips them up. He leaves them unbuttoned. Those perfectly ironed suit pants he loves so much, now crinkled and dirty.

My palms are slick around the fire extinguisher, but I don’t let it slip from my grasp. When I adjust my hold on it, Stewart glances down.

“Why do you have that? Put it down,” he orders. “Don’t do anything crazy.”

I follow his eyes, focusing on the silver handle that’s tucked beneath my fingers and the pin that remains in place. The woman shuffles where she’s sitting, most likely trying to put her clothes on.

“Crazy?” The laugh I let rip through the space between us is anything but sane.

“Yes, crazy! You’re freaking me out. Relax before you do something stupid.”

“Do something stupid,” I echo, stroking the side of the fire extinguisher. “Like fucking someone who isn’t your fiancée? Who isn’t the woman you’re about to marry in a year? The one who has already bought her dress and told everyone she’s marrying a good man? You don’t get to call me crazy. You don’t get to tell me torelax.”

The nameless woman slinks off the dining table and stands beside him. She doesn’t try to leave despite the way he spoke about her. My chest cracks wide open as I finally register the way she admitted they’ve been together for a while. Often.

My hold on my emotions is faltering. I’ve always been bad at remaining calm when I’m upset, but this . . . this isn’t some small fight or misunderstanding. This is so much more than that.

There’s no going back from this.

It’s that thought that has me pulling the pin on the fire extinguisher and squeezing the lever, dousing the couple in white foam.

2

ANNALISE

I can still feelthe extinguisher foam on my fingers the next morning despite how many times I scrubbed my hands. My sister is practically burning the carpet with her frantic pacing, rage lighting her usual soft eyes. They’re a bright blue, so unlike my brown.

She apologizes for what feels like the millionth time, and I tell her to cut it out for the millionth and one.

When I showed up at her rental house last night after nearly tossing my ring into the marina and sobbing in my car for an hour, she took me in without a word needing to have been spoken between us. One look at me and she knew. The apologies came once I told her what happened. Every gut-wrenching detail of it. It took everything in me to convince her to hold off until today to enact our revenge.

We took one step into the condo Stewart and I share—shared, I guess—before she was stalking off to the bedroom to find my luggage. An hour later, all of my clothes and important belongings are tucked away, ready for a new home. I wish I felt the same.

There’s nothing about this condo that expresses who I am, yet it was home. The place I thought I would be coming backto after my wedding. Where we would start our newlywed life together and create a lifetime more memories. Good ones and bad ones, but not like this.

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